in the newly minted role of the “missing link” — that elusive creature loping halfway across the evolutionary page between an ape and us. The New Man became the right man at the right time, the one who, “in his glowering silence and mystery, would show… the unthinkable: that humans were animals.”30 It was assumed that he had little or no power of speech, ran like a baboon, and walked on the outsides of his feet. But as more bones were unearthed and analysed, this view did not stand up. The most “apelike” skeletons were found to be sufferers from osteoarthritis, severely crippled individuals who had evidently been supported for years by their community. Evidence also came to light that the “grisly folk” had not only cared for their sick but also buried their dead with religious rites — with flowers and ochre and animal horns — the first people on earth known to do so. And last but not least, the Neanderthal brain turned out to be bigger than our own. Perhaps Homo neanderthalensis was really not so brutish after all. Perhaps he deserved to be promoted to a subspecies of modern man: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. And if that were so, the two variants could, by definition, have interbred.31
Before the two began to compete in Europe, the Cro-Magnons lived south of the Mediterranean and the Neanderthals north. Then as now, the Middle East was a crossroads. Dwelling sites in that turbulent region show occupation by both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons beginning about 100,000 years ago. We can’t tell whether they ever lived there at exactly the same times, let alone whether they shared the Holy Land harmoniously. Most likely their arrangement was a kind of time-share, with Neanderthals moving south out of Europe during especially cold spells in the Ice Age and Cro-Magnons moving north from Africa whenever the climate warmed. What is most interesting is that the material culture of the two groups, as shown by their artefacts, was identical over a span of more than 50,000 years. Archaeologists find it difficult to say whether any given cave was occupied by Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons unless human bone is found with the tools. I take this as strong evidence that the two groups had very similar mental and linguistic capabilities, that neither was more primitive or “less evolved.”
No Neanderthal flesh, skin, or hair has yet come to light, so we can’t say whether these people were brown or blond, hairy as Esau or smooth as Jacob. Nor do we know much about the Cro-Magnons’ superficial appearance, though genetic studies suggest that most modern Europeans may be descended from them.32 We know these populations only by their bones. Both were roughly the same height, between five and six feet tall with the usual variation between sexes. But one was built for strength and the other for speed. The Neanderthal was heavyset and brawny, like a professional weightlifter or wrestler. The Cro-Magnon was slighter and more gracile, a track athlete rather than a bodybuilder. It is hard to know how far these differences were innate, and how much they reflected habitat and lifestyle. In 1939, the anthropologist Carleton Coon drew an amusing reconstruction of a Neanderthal cleaned up, shaved, and dressed in a fedora, jacket, and tie. Such a man, Coon remarked, might pass unnoticed on the New York subway.
As such analogies suggest, the variation between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon skeletons does not fall far outside the range of modern humans. Put side by side, the bony remains of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Woody Allen might exhibit a similar contrast. The skull, however, is another matter. The so-called classic Neanderthal (which is a rather misleading term because it is self-fulfilling, based on the more pronounced examples) had a long, low skull with strong brow ridges in front and a bony ledge across the nape of the neck, the Neanderthal “bun” or “chignon.” The jaw was robust, with strong teeth and a rounded chin; the nose was broad and presumably squat. At first glance the design looks archaic, much the same architecture as that of Homo erectus. But — as noted — the Neanderthal brain was bigger on average than the Cro-Magnon. Coon’s subway rider had a thick skull but not necessarily a thick head.
What this adds up to, I think, is that the supposedly archaic characteristics of the Neanderthal were in fact an overlay of cold-climate adaptations on an essentially modern human frame.33 The high foreheads of modern people can get so chilled that the brain is damaged, and icy air can freeze the lungs. The Neanderthal brain was sheltered by the massive brows and the low, yet roomy, vault. Air entering Neanderthal lungs was warmed by the broad nose, and the whole face had a better blood supply. Thickset, brawny people do not lose body heat as quickly as slender people. Signs of similar adaptation (in body shape, at least) can be seen among modern Inuit, Andeans, and Himalayans — and this after only a few thousand years of living with intense cold, beside the 100,000 during which Europe’s Neanderthals made their living on the front lines of the Ice Age.
Things seem to have gone well enough for them until Cro-Magnons began moving north and west from the Middle East, about 40,000 years ago. Until then, the cold had been the Neanderthals’ great ally, always turning invaders back sooner or later, like the Russian winter. But this time the Cro-Magnons came to stay. The invasion seems to have coincided with climatic instability linked to sudden reversals of ocean currents that caused freezing and thawing of the North Atlantic in upsets as short as a decade.34 Such sharp changes — severe as the worst predictions we now have for global warming — would have devastated animal and plant communities on which the Neanderthals depended. We know that they ate a lot of big game, which they hunted by ambush — breaks in their bones are similar to those sustained by rodeo cowboys, showing they went in close for the kill. And we know that they were not usually nomadic, occupying the same caves and valleys year-round. Humans in general have been called a “weed species,” thriving in disrupted environments, but of these two groups, the Neanderthals were the more rooted. The Cro-Magnons were the invasive briars. Climate change would have made life difficult for everyone, of course, but unstable conditions could have given the edge to the less physically specialized, weaker at close quarters but quicker on their feet.
I remember seeing a cartoon when I was a schoolboy — I think it may have been in Punch — showing three or four bratty Neanderthal children standing on a cliff, badgering their father: “Daddy, Daddy! Can we go and throw rocks at the Cro-Magnons today?” For about ten millennia, from 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, the late Neanderthals and the early Cro-Magnons probably did throw rocks at each other, not to mention dousing campfires, stealing game, and perhaps seizing women and children. At the end of that unimaginably long struggle, Europe and the whole world belonged to our kind, and the “classic” Neanderthal was gone forever. But what really happened? Did the Neanderthal line die out, or was it to some degree assimilated?
The 10,000-year struggle was so gradual that it may have been scarcely perceptible — a fitful, inconclusive war with land lost and won at the rate of a few miles in a lifetime. Yet, like all wars, it sparked innovation. New tools and weapons appeared, new clothing and rituals, the beginnings of cave painting (an art form that would reach its height during the last great fling of the Ice Age, after the classic Neanderthals had gone). We also know that cultural contact went both ways. Late Neanderthal sites in France show change and adaptation at a pace never seen before.35 By then, near the end, the war’s implications must have become dreadfully clear. It seems that the last Neanderthal bands held out in the mountains of Spain and Yugoslavia, driven like Apaches into rougher and rougher terrain.
If the warfare picture I have sketched has any truth to it, then we face unpalatable conclusions. This is what makes the Neanderthal debate so emotional: it is not only about ancient people but about ourselves. If it turns out that the Neanderthals disappeared because they were an evolutionary dead end, we can merely shrug and blame natural selection for their fate. But if they were in fact a variant or race of modern man, then we must admit to ourselves that their death may have been the first genocide. Or, worse, not the first — merely the first of which evidence survives. It may follow from this that we are descended from a million years of ruthless victories, genetically predisposed by the sins of our fathers
